Of one fault, in particular, there is no appearance in the archæology of this work. Nowhere is there any sign of an idiosyncracy which is not without example--that of professing to speak of statistics, and yet speaking of nothing but antiquities; as if these, which are saved with so much difficulty from the charge of being wholly out of place, were the pith and marrow, the most vital part of any body of statistics. This is a small merit, but it is allied to a greater. Throughout these volumes, there is no tendency to discuss such futile questions as have sometimes lowered the credit of antiquarian pursuits. We have seen it solemnly inquired, whether Æneas, upon landing in Italy, touched the soil with the right or with the left foot foremost; whether Karl Haco was in person present at the sacrifice of his son; whether a faded inscription upon the walls of an old church be of this import or that--in either case the interest having so little to support it in the significance of the record that it can scarce be imagined to exist at all, except as it may centre in the mere truth of the deciphering. Nothing of this doting, degenerate character, repudiated by all antiquaries, occurs in the _Statistical Account_: if it did, the sum of all the errors in names, dates, and other things, inevitably incident to so vast a variety of details, would not have been an equal blemish. It is probable that neither history nor antiquities will find a place in any future statistics of Scotland. Not that they have been enough examined either in that connexion, or elsewhere; but it is now common to make them the subject of separate, independent essays--the most proper form for the delivery of anything that pertains to such matters. The good service done in this department, by both of these Accounts, now falls to be performed by such works as the "Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland,"[10] which have this for their single object; and the presumption is only fair, that some further light on such matters may be contributed by the "Parochiale Scoticanum," lately announced as in the course of preparation[11]--though our expectations would not have been at all lessened by a somewhat less magnificent promise than that "every man in Scotland may be enabled to ascertain, with some precision, the first footing and _gradual progress of Christianity_ in his own district and neighbourhood." [10] _The Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland._ Illustrated by R. W. BILLINGS, and WILLIAM BURN. [11] Prospectus _Parochiale Scoticanum_, now editing by COSMO INNES, Esq., Advocate.